Refund (14 page)

Jane moved outside. It was a cool day, with drizzly rain. “I don't know,” said Jane, looking at the sky. But her son ran out the door, bubbling with joy that the girl was back. “Yes!” he yelled. He and Mary Grace arranged themselves around a card table in the front yard, a pitcher of lemonade and some cups between them. Mary Grace clutched an umbrella. Jane watched their small, dignified backs as they regarded the neighborhood, set in their belief that others would want what they offered.

She did not have many plastic cups. She thought she could ask Mary Grace's mother if she had any cups; she looked up the woman's number in the phone book.

“Hello,” said Mary Grace's mother. Her voice sounded high-pitched and young.

“It's Jane Goldman, next door,” she said. “Mary Grace's over right now. I just wanted to say hi.” There was a silence. “Well, the kids are having a lemonade stand, and well, I wondered if you have any plastic cups—”

She heard a deep intake of breath. “Stop,” said Mary Grace's mother.

“Excuse me?” said Jane.

“She knows that she can get sweets from you. She needs to lose ten pounds. I don't want her to look ugly. Do you?”

“No!” said Jane. “Maybe she'd stay at your house if you actually talked to her—”

“I'm a good mother,” said Mary Grace's mother. “I keep her clean. She minds her manners.” There was the sound of growling. At first Jane thought it was the mother but then realized it was the
family dog. “Stay away from her,” said Mary Grace's mother, her voice rising, “Stop feeding her—”

Jane banged down the phone. “Dammit!” she yelled. She heard Mary Grace and her son laughing outside, and she knew that it would be the last time the girl would visit their house. It would be his first grief, the loss of a friend; it would tip like a domino against the losses to come. Mary Grace would have her own disappointments with her sour and careless parents, and the families would live side by side until this particular race was over.

Everyone—the children, the parents—were visitors on earth; they were here briefly, and then they would vanish. The children sat, stalwart, behind a plastic pitcher. The clouds broke apart, and sunlight fell upon them. She went and bought a cup for a dollar because she had no change. Others bought lemonade, too, with dollars, and the children still had no change, and within an hour they had ten dollars. The children were gleeful at their unexpected riches. “I will buy billions and billions of toys!” her son screamed. The baby, sitting on a blanket, crowed as she regarded them. The children stood around the table, counting their riches, over and over, counting their riches, over and over.

The Loan Officer's Visit

F
or the first sixteen years of my life, my father was a vigorous man. Once upon a time, he was almost a blur. But when he became ill, he spent half of the morning lying in bed with the curtains drawn. Then he put on a gray suit, walked gingerly to his Chevy, and sat at his desk at Great Mutual in Beverly Hills listening to people—some wealthy, some not—ask for loans to acquire boats, houses in Hawaii, expensive cars. He listened to the customers' excited and rambling descriptions of the trips they were going to take, the second homes they were going to decorate; he set up meetings with imaginary people at 3:00
PM
so he could instead shut the door to his office, lay his cheek on his maroon couch, and close his eyes, trying to conserve the energy he needed to get to the end of the day.

He was never quite sure if he could make it to 6:00
PM
; his superiors tried to be flexible, as he was a good closer, but he knew they had their limits, and he did not want to lose his job. He was a stubborn man, and he did manage to sit at his desk until the doors of the
bank were locked, even if he was sometimes damp with sweat by the end, as though he had run a marathon.

Once, when I was seventeen, I stopped by his office and waited for a ride home. I sat on the couch in his office, the fabric the peculiar spongy consistency of an alien landscape. I always enjoyed watching the oddities who wanted money from the bank, or more personally, my father. That day, a couple thanked my father for helping them arrange a loan to furnish their necessary chalet in Switzerland. The woman wore spike heels that looked like they could puncture a rubber tire. The man, in a peculiar shiny blazer, nodded too often and gripped his gold pen as though it warmed his hand. My father smiled, asked innocuous questions about their vacation plans, indicated the
x
's where they were supposed to sign.

—It's right at the edge of the Alps, the woman bragged. She glanced around, as though listening to applause from an invisible crowd. —You just walk out your door and hop on your skis. So simple! Fabulous!

I disliked this couple, not for their money, but for the casual acceptance of their freedom. My father laughed and shook hands with them; he was an excellent loan officer because he knew how to make them believe they deserved whatever they sought.

—Have a good time, he said to her. —Bon voyage.

That night, he drove me home. I was about to graduate high school and move off, oddly, to college in Arizona, a place I had applied to only because it was the one school that had sent me a brochure; this seemed a sign of something fortuitous. It was also the only college that had accepted me.

—Why do you want to go there? he asked. —What's there?

—I don't know, I said. I tried to think of something interesting. —Cactuses. Cacti.

—But what's wrong with here?

I looked through the windshield at Wilshire Boulevard. It was the mid-1980s, a rainy night, and the tall, gray marble buildings of the Wilshire Corridor gleamed in the damp clouds. The cars and their headlights trembling in long, pale streaks on the pavement, the streetlights green and red lozenges in the night.

I didn't answer.

—Look at everything we have here! Beaches! Museums! So why go?

The tenor of his voice made me not want to meet his eyes; it seemed in some way reasonable but not what I wanted to hear. I shifted around in my seat, silent because there was no good reason but that I was seventeen and somehow, here, it had become difficult to breathe.

—They offer good ceramics courses, I tried, lamely. —I would like to learn ceramics.

—Well, what do you want to be? he asked. —Doctor, lawyer, what?

—I don't know, I said. This question felt like a vise around my heart. —What did you think of that couple? The Swiss chalet ones.

—I have no opinion, he said.

—Come on, I said. —I know you do.

—Okay, he said, gripping the wheel. —They were silly. What do they need that chalet for? What do any of them need a second house for? I don't know.

M
Y FATHER LAY IN A SHADOWED ROOM, SLEEPING LIKE AN INFANT
, while I grew and grew. I strapped myself into a creaky plane and let it take me to college. Ceramics was full of extremely focused ceramicists, who were intimidating, so instead I tried biology, communications, European history, Korean literature, Portuguese, archaeology, becoming the sort of student who was the bane of guidance counselors.
I graduated, settled on the spectacularly jobless field of conserving Renaissance art, sent my résumés out to museums across the country, acquired jobs, hunched over rare paintings in museum basements, trying to return them to their former glory, lost the jobs when funding ran out, which it always seemed to do. I did not know where I wanted to go and let the paintings, the museums that needed me, pull me where I was needed, and eventually I found a man who wanted to marry me.

Years groaned by. My father was interested in learning what was happening in my life, and we spoke once a week, maybe twice. He woke up, parked as close as he could to the door of his office, walked inside and made loans.

—Describe the view out your window, my father asked me, when I was in Greenpoint.

—Cars parked on the street, I said, at twenty-seven. —Some people leaning against a hood, talking.

—Let me try to picture it, he said. —What kind of cars?

—Mostly American, I said. —Buicks. Explorers. Toyotas. One car has a big dent in the side.

—How big a dent?

—Maybe the size of a big steak.

—Hm. They should get that fixed.

—Well, I said. —How are you doing?

—We have a new bagel store that opened up down the street, he said. —Delicious. You have to come try some.

—What do they taste like?

—Uh. Salty. I prefer the cinnamon raisin.

—That sounds good.

My father and I clung to our phones, imagining.

A
FEW TIMES A YEAR
, I
CAME OUT, AND WE SAT IN THE LIVING ROOM
where the furniture never changed, sunlight coming through the
orange drapes the same way it did when I was a child, the same translucence that had filled the room when my father had been strong, when he laughed and tossed me into the air as though I were a feather, nothing.

I brought my mother and father an apple from the corner grocer I went to in Brooklyn, a greasy donut wrapped in a blue paper napkin from Seattle, a camellia cut from our front yard in Richmond. Then, after a few days, I left, gripping the flimsy metal arms of the airplane seat, always waiting for the plane to pause, shudder in the air, and then start plummeting.

O
VER THE YEARS, MY FATHER IMPROVED A BIT. HE WAS ABLE TO
work more hours, and on good days, he and my mother went out to dinner and a movie. Then they found they could drive a few hours out of town to sit by a swimming pool and spend the night. My father discovered he could sometimes walk two blocks, but that was it.

He described his successes with a kind of self-deprecating wonder as though at any moment his improvements could vanish. When he told me that they had gone on a two-day trip, and that he had come back and gone to work with just one day of rest, I said, “That's wonderful.” And when I hung up the phone, I got in the car, drove to Burger King, ordered two hamburgers and a large fries, and ate them right then. I hadn't known that I was hungry at all.

I started asking my parents to visit. I asked them to visit me in Tucson at eighteen, Seattle at twenty-four, Brooklyn at twenty-seven, Richmond at thirty-five. No. No. No.

—Why not? I asked.

—It's too far. I'm afraid I can't do it.

—Oh.

I had to ask the next question; I was too greedy.

—Do you want to try?

Long silence.

—Not now.

—When?

—Maybe someday, he said.

Ten years went by. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five.

W
E SAT, LOOKING OUT OUR SEPARATE WINDOWS
.

T
HEN, ONE DAY, WHEN
I
WAS FORTY-THREE, MY FATHER SAID, SUDDENLY
,

—Now.

—Now what? I asked; I had stopped hoping.

—We're going to try to come see you, my father said. —We're getting on the plane. We'll try. Next week.

T
HE YEARNING FOR MY PARENTS TO COME SEE ME, TO BE ABLE TO
board a plane and come to me in a different city, another place, had illuminated my life, a constant light burning in the distance. Now, at forty-three years old, there was no knowing how to turn it off. It seemed important somehow that the house was clean. I mopped our floors, I washed the bathtub, bought some roses and set them in a glass vase. I looked at the family whom I had, through no fault of my own, assembled. They sprawled out on a couch, in the living room. They were living. They chewed gum. They had met my parents before, I had packed them in a plane to show them off, but they were happy here, in their natural habitat. We lived in one of the suburbs near Richmond off I-95, one of those developments in which newish brick houses, ringing a cul-de-sac, are designed to look old.

I was at the airport two hours early. I waited. I stood with the other waiting people, trying to ignore the Homeland Security crew strolling a few feet nearby, checking bags, confiscating shampoo
bottles. The security crew was looking for anger when really the dangerous emotion was love.

—Flight 237 has just landed from Long Beach, the disembodied voice said flatly.

Flight 237.

I pretended to be casual, sipping a Diet Coke; there was a soft, distant march in my throat.

Then my mother and father appeared. Slowly. Them. They were themselves. They came through the tunnel. They came through the sour gray airport light, dressed casually, in pastel polo shirts and velour sweatpants, resembling ordinary tourists. My father raised his thin arms in triumph. He was pale, and there were sweat stains on his shirt. But he had made it. He was standing here.

My mother reached out to touch my face.

—You don't have to cry, she said.

M
Y PARENTS GOT INTO MY CAR, AND
I
DROVE THEM TO THEIR HOTEL
, a bulky, cement Holiday Inn that resembled a dam. In the carport, there was a sparkling river coursing around a stand of longleaf pine that looked like a small, organized forest. Maroon-uniformed valets lurked around the pine trees.